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Songwriters Series

2018 Shiner Summer Songwriter Series

We are knocking around ideas and venues for the 2018 songwriters series. Stay tuned!

2017 Shiner Summer Songwriter Series

Happy New Year singer/songwriter fans, we are working on plans for the 2017 summer season! Bill is working on the headliners but if you are interested in an opening slot give us a shout! If you have 30 to 45 minutes of “original material” that you want to share with the world, drop us a note.

Email: damwilli@gmail.com for requests for opening acts!

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2016 Songwriter Series

JULY 2016

Sunday, July 10th: Templin Saloon in Gonzales TX, 6pm –

Adam & Chris Carroll come on about 6pm.

A “to be announced” opener come on about 4:30pm. It will be on the inside with the nice AC! See ya there!

About Adam

A Texas Singer Songwriter born and raised, Adam Carroll joins the short list of down-home storytellers taking events of ordinary lives and turning them into deeply moving, often humorous songs.

With seven Indie CDs and regular tours across the USA, Canada, Belgium and The Netherlands as “one of the hippest songwriters on the Texas music landscape”, this engaging Americana story-teller, guitar-picker has earned critical acclaim throughout the world.

“The core of what I do is songwriting; it’s the one thing I’m passionate about. It’s the most fulfilling and challenging job I can imagine.” explains Adam.

From his first studio records produced by Grammy Award winner Lloyd Maines, South of Town, Lookin’ Out the Screen Door, Live and Far Away Blues, through to his latest releases, Old Town Rock N Roll, Hard Times with Michael O’Connor and Live At Flipnotics, the quality never wavers. Adam Carroll is one of those songwriters with a rare command of the English language as well as an amazing sense of melody.

It’s little surprise that he’s earned enviable comparisons to the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Todd Snider, John Prine, and even Bob Dylan. Like those songwriters, Carroll uses ironic but heartfelt humor to leaven his sometimes personal, usually emotional, and always poignant observations.

“WhenTommy starts singing I stop talking.
I just love his voice.”

-Lyle Lovett-

2016 Songwriter Series

JUNE 2016

Sunday, June 19th: Howard’s in Shiner TX, 6pm –

Van Wilks’ name is synonymous with the iron muscle of Texas Blues Rock. 21st Century Blues reinforces this with 12 finely crafted songs that stay true to the American roots masters, but bring that feel into the here and now by combining low down, juke joint blues with a melodic pop sensibility, edgy word play, and blistering guitar. Van’s firey fretwork is the thread holding it all together, and the sum of all these parts is unmistakably Van Wilks!

Declared “a perfect cross between Jimi Hendrix and Van Halen” by the Austin-American Statesman, Van Wilks has toured nationally and internationally with such acts as ZZ Top (whose Billy Gibbons is one of Van’s biggest supporters) and torn the roof off nightclubs and concert halls from Lubbock, Texas , the Virgin Islands, Moscow, Paris, Madrid, and countless points all over Europe. As the Houston Chronicle noted of one show: “By the end of the night we were all so delirious we wouldn’t let them go until they came out for several post-closing-time encores.”

Van Wilks cuts his devotion for blues with a funk, hard rock edge and polishes it with melodic undertones. It wears its influences well, rendering his sound distinct, compelling and unmistakable. What Wilks brings to the Texas (and World) table, he delivers with ferocious tenacity, passionate playing and Lone Star panache.

2016 Songwriter Series

JUNE 2016

Drew comes on about 6pm. Special acoustic guest David Houck comes on about 4pm.

Here’s a little about Drew Kennedy:

Rebellion doesn’t have to be loud. Smarter won’t always get in your face. A revolution can be an awfully nice guy with a small Bose p.a. and head full of songs in a Prius, passing 15-passenger vans and tour buses on his way to his next gig.

“You can’t wait for someone to give you the green light,” says Drew Kennedy, his Prius parked in his New Braunfels, Texas, driveway. “You have to take ownership over what you’re doing and make it happen for yourself. If you wait for someone, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. Maybe forever.”

Over the past decade, Kennedy has left the waiting to other people. The 35-year-old has devoted his life to writing and performing his songs his way for anyone who cares. With a catalog seven-albums deep, one novel penned, a music festival created, and an ever-growing group of admirers comprising elite peers and everyday listeners, Kennedy has done more than build a strong career in music. He has reimagined what it means to be a contemporary songwriter, both artistically and entrepreneurially.

But tell that to the guy himself, and he shrugs and smiles.

“I just want to write the best songs that I possibly can,” Kennedy says. “I don’t want to ever stop approaching this as a student of popular song or the craft of writing.”

His most recent release, 2014’s Sad Songs Happily Played, is both a career-spanning snapshot and a winning testament to his instinctive “well, why not?” M.O. On a Friday night in November 2013, Kennedy performed in one of his favorite venues, a former post office in League City, just southeast of Houston. Talking to the sound engineer after the show, he mentioned what an ideal space it’d be for a live recording.

That’s when the engineer told him he already had the whole evening on tape.

The night so serendipitously captured on Sad Songs is token Kennedy: his distinct but regionally muddled drawl, formed by a youth in the Northeast, college in the South, and adulthood in the Southwest, yokes beautifully crafted, often heartbreaking songs with side-splittingly funny stories in a seamless give-and-take. As the show rolls on, you can almost hear his audience leaning in, held captive by the guy on stage with just a guitar.

“I’ve always been attracted to more somber music,” Kennedy continues. “But I like making people laugh, too. I like knowing I can keep them engaged for two hours. I look at all of it as an extension of songwriting — making the arc of the show go from beginning to end and giving a reason why you’re playing each song.”

Kennedy was 19 when he decided he wanted to give the guitar a try. His grandfather bankrolled his first steps. “He gave me 300 bucks and I went out and bought a black acoustic Yamaha guitar that was $299,” he says. “I started gigging within a month of getting that guitar. And it was awful. But I didn’t know any better.”

Kennedy chocks his willingness to jump first, ask questions later to naiveté, and that’s probably true, at least during his earliest years on stage. But another motive has overwhelmingly helped him call the shots: he likes proving people wrong. “I was supposed to be a lawyer or something,” he says. “I was supposed to do what everyone else does: find a safe job and make a bunch of money and be successful that way. I want to show people that you don’t have to do that to be successful — to be the kind of person that you want to be.”

Today, Kennedy’s definition of success is simple and unyielding. “I just want to serve the inspiration that will become the song and make it as good as I possibly can,” he says. “And that is it.”

Fidelity to inspiration defines just about everything Kennedy does, including deciding when to record. He released his first album, Hillbilly Pilgrim, in 2003, and the dozen years since then have seen a steady flow of output: 2007’s Dollar Theatre Movie; 2010’s An Audio Guide to Cross Country Travel and live offering Alone, But Not Lonely; 2011’s Fresh Water in the Salton Sea, best savored with its companion novel of the same name — Kennedy’s first and only work of prose to date; 2013’s Wide Listener; and 2014’s Sad Songs Happily Played.

Kennedy’s collections have earned widespread attention. No Depression, Engine 145, CMT Edge and other beacon roots publications have heaped praise upon praise of his efforts. His always expanding circle of co-writers and collaborators now includes Lori McKenna, Walt Wilkins, Matraca Berg, Jeff Hanna, Travis Meadows, Susan Gibson, and other heavy hitters, while Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Patty Loveless and Jason Eady, Bart Crow, and more have recorded his work. McKenna and Kennedy’s richly layered story song “Rose of Jericho” made its way onto both of the writers’ most recent studio albums.

Kennedy makes regular trips to Nashville, every month and a half or so. He still marvels at the immensity and ingenuity of the town’s creative community, and he approaches co-writing as a learning opportunity that doesn’t end once the session’s over. “You take a little bit of every co-writer you have with you. The next time that you’re sitting by yourself and writing a song and you feel an urge to say it one way, you think, ‘Well, what’s another perspective?’” He concludes, “The more I surround myself with these incredibly poetic voices, the more it improves my own in my own songs.”

The Red River Songwriters’ Festival is another Kennedy creation designed to provide heavy doses of inspiration in numerous forms, from the landscape and devoted fans from all walks of life, to the brilliant artists who perform. Launched in 2011 by Kennedy and a Red River local he calls a “patron saint of songwriters,” the baby festival has now drawn some of roots music’s premier voices: Jeff Hanna, Matraca Berg, Lori McKenna, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Bruce Robison, and others have all made the trip, joining red-letter core group Walt Wilkins, Susan Gibson, Kelley Mickwee, Josh Grider, Brandy Zdan, and of course, Kennedy.

Reflecting on his chosen line of work and dogged insistence on doing things his way, Kennedy is grateful. “I appreciate that it’s not a ‘hard good,’” he says. “I’m not inventing a longer lasting light bulb. They’re songs. Songs can impact people in a very personal way, but it’s not like groceries and clothing — it’s an emotional need, not a physical need. I’m very aware of the fact that I’m really lucky to get to do this.”

Summer afternoons become a gateway to good times in Shiner Texas as the ever popular “Shiner Sundays” make their return. To the delight of Shiner citizens, passer- through travelers, and music listeners from the area, Bill Pekar and Howard Gloor share the music and memories they have made in their travels with songs and guest artists. The event has proven to be a success, and provides the famous little town with the best acoustic music you will hear on any given Sunday.